Fin­gal vil­lages get a €200,000 wind­fall

THREE FIN­GAL VIL­LAGES WIN FUND­ING FROM THE VIL­LAGE RE­NEWAL SCHEME

THREE Fin­gal vil­lages are to col­lec­tively ben­e­fit from €200,000 in fund­ing from the Town and Vil­lage Re­newal Scheme.

A chil­dren’s play­ground in Bal­roth­ery will get half the fund­ing while a sculp­ture and cul­ture park in the Naul will re­ceive some €76,000 in fund­ing from the na­tional scheme.

Port­marnock vil­lage will gain €24,000 from the fund for ‘vil­lage en­hance­ments’.

Only vil­lages of less than 10,000 in pop­u­la­tion could be con­sid­ered for the scheme, ac­cord­ing to Cllr Tony Mur­phy (IA) who con­grat­u­lated the three Fin­gal vil­lages who were suc­cess­ful in ap­ply­ing for fund­ing, par­tic­u­larly Bal­roth­ery and the Naul which lie within the coun­cil­lor’s Bal­brig­gan ward.

Chair­per­son of Bal­roth­ery Com­mu­nity As­so­ci­a­tion Kevin Tolan said: ‘On be­half of the com­mu­nity, we would like to thank Min­is­ter Michael Ring for his recog­ni­tion of the re­quire­ment for th­ese fa­cil­i­ties in Bal­roth­ery and also Paul Smyth in the Eco­nomic En­ter­prise & Tourism De­vel­op­ment De­part­ment of Fin­gal County Coun­cil.

‘Paul and his col­leagues worked closely with the Com­mu­nity As­so­ci­a­tion to en­sure the ap­pli­ca­tion was as strong as pos­si­ble be­cause Bal­roth­ery was com­pet­ing against other vil­lages through­out Ire­land for a share of the avail­able fund­ing .

‘We would also like to thank Cllr Tony Mur­phy for his on-go­ing as­sis­tance in iden­ti­fy­ing the var­i­ous streams of com­mu­nity fund­ing that are avail­able from Fin­gal County Coun­cil and from cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

‘ The Town and Vil­lage Scheme is a new fund­ing model that joins the com­mu­nity with the lo­cal au­thor­ity right from the ini­tial con­cept stage and the works that have been car­ried out as a re­sult of the 2016 fund­ing have been very well re­ceived in Bal­roth­ery and the 2017 fund­ing will un­doubt­edly be equally well re­ceived es­pe­cially by par­ents of young chil­dren.

‘All-in-all, it is an ex­cit­ing time for Bal­roth­ery and we re­ally look for­ward to now ar­rang­ing a work­shop with the chil­dren to as­cer­tain ex­actly what they would like to see in their play­ground and to work­ing to­gether with Fin­gal County Coun­cil to make the chil­dren’s dreams a re­al­ity in 2018.’

Fine Gael TD Alan Far­rell wel­comed the al­lo­ca­tion of €200,000 in fund­ing to com­plete pro­jects in three com­mu­ni­ties, say­ing: ‘I am de­lighted with the an­nounce­ment of €200,000 in fund­ing for lo­cal pro­jects in three vil­lages in Dublin Fin­gal by my Fine Gael col­league, the Min­is­ter for Com­mu­nity and Rural Af­fairs, Michael Ring TD.

‘ The Town and Vil­lage Re­newal Scheme forms part of the Gov­ern­ment’s Ac­tion Plan for Rural De­vel­op­ment and the fund­ing pro­vided aims to work to­wards re­vi­tal­is­ing lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties in the North County and across the coun­try.’

Sen­a­tor James Reilly wel­comed the fund­ing, say­ing: ‘Here in Fin­gal we have placed a par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis this year on pro­jects which have the ca­pac­ity to sup­port the eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment of rural town and vil­lages as well as their neigh­bour­ing town­lands.

‘ The scheme will also sup­port im­prove­ments to pub­lic ameni­ties in our town and vil­lage cen­tres, to help make them more at­trac­tive places in which to live and work and to visit. I par­tic­u­larly wel­come the grant for Bal­roth­ery €100,000 Chil­dren’s Theme Park for the hard work­ing Bal­roth­ery Com­mu­nity As­so­ci­a­tion.’